


When the Gods are Silent

by adfinem



Category: Dragon Age (Comics), Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Blood Magic, Comic: Dragon Age: Until We Sleep, Dreamers (Dragon Age), Eluvians, Enemies to Lovers, Evanuris, Eventual Smut, F/M, Forgotten Ones, Lucerni, Non-Inquisitor Lavellan, Old God Soul, Old Gods (Dragon Age), Post-Trespasser, Self-Harm, Tevinter Imperium, Titans (Dragon Age), Torture, illiterate main character, male Inquisitor Lavellan/Dorian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-22 00:54:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10686438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adfinem/pseuds/adfinem
Summary: Dalish say Dirthamen taught elves the value of loyalty and faith in family. If only they knew the whole truth.Dirthamen tried to help Solas and Mythal free their people, but he died trying. Part of him lives on inside another.The Evanuris were locked away for their own good, and he’ll do anything necessary to keep them there.(Reposted after heavy editing.)





	When the Gods are Silent

**Author's Note:**

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> [](http://imgur.com/4T4YDuM)  
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> tarot by Weissidian

It was always while she slept. No one appeared even after days of staring at the same corner where lay an empty tray and a pitcher. What little urine she passed looked like tea, and her flanks ached with every breath.

There was no victory in withering, forgotten inside some cell.

Eravas shook her head to clear it. Her lips were cracked and caked with dust and dried blood. She tottered to a standing position from her seat on the cold floor and slowly made her way over to her pile of blankets. Her bare feet sank into the fabric as she reached out to trace a finger along the last line she’d etched into the wall overhead. Twenty-eight days were blocked off fifty times.

Tiny chips of rock scattered around her feet as she finished her tally for the day. Jet rock was black as a raven’s wing and fast to break away under her nails. Most of Minrathous had been built with the stuff, crumbling buildings still standing tall with magic and slave labor. At the height of the empire Tevinter had stretched from the Nocen Sea all the way to the frozen lands in the south.

She had no idea where she even was.

This was _all_ guesswork, and for all she knew four years of her life hadn't gone by. Maybe more, maybe less, but it was an anchor to hold onto. Darkness from all sides had left her blind and grasping.

Wincing, she opened her bedroll and crawled in, searing hot pain shooting from her calves to her hips. Visible twitches under her skin showed her just how dehydrated she really was, particularly around some deep scars where her thigh muscles had once been cut. She leaned forward with arms extended straight toward her toes.

A whimper escaped her lips and she jerked at the sound. Cold nipped the back of her neck. She tried to make another sound but her throat closed up in protest.

Only water and rest would calm this bout of spasms. She glared at the rings circling her wrists and ankles, everite inlaid with tendrils of lyrium. Her only light. There was a matching one around her neck as well. Wards within the walls reinforced whatever enchantments were worked into the metal.

She clasped her hands together close to her chest. One day there would be a way out. Until then, maybe if she closed her eyes she could pretend she was back with her clan and beneath a starless sky.

Darkness swallowed her whole as she fell into dreamless sleep. This wasn’t natural, a mage without dreams. A _Dreamer_ without dreams. Nothing about her life was natural anymore, never seeing the sun and enclosed by rock. Just so long as the lyrium enchantments kept her mindless, she could forget how much of her life she'd slept away.

She _tried_ to forget, waking only to sustain herself. While awake the silence was deafening and heavy. Sometimes she felt a hand that wasn’t there lingering on her shoulder, or wings rustling in the dark. Always a presence in the room she couldn’t see.

Sleep often wouldn’t come, so her knees became scraped raw from crawling corner to corner, but nothing was ever there.

She was going insane. Trembling, she raked her nails up her calves and shrieked for it to stop.

And one day it did, when her starless sky began to fall.

Rumbles in the distance stirred her from sleep. Her head was so foggy she thought it was her stomach, but another rumble came closer swiftly after. Dust and small fragments of rock landed in her eyes and she shielded her face with both hands. Wherever she was, the building was coming down, and the wards with it.

Wings rustled far in the distance, but were drawing nearer. Mana coiled beneath the confines of her skin like vines, prodding and toying for vulnerabilities from her scalp down to her toes. The wards in the walls stuttered again as another rumble shook her room and pelted her with sharp bits of rock.

“You hear my voice, so follow it,” the man murmured in her ear. Breath tickled the back of her neck, but there was no body, no source for the warmth she felt. “Would you believe that I want to help you? Us?”

Heat pooled in her belly and she wanted it out, would give anything to get him—whatever it was— _out._

“Struggle if you wish. I am within you. Irassal ma ghilas,” the man whispered, “Iras ma ghilas, vhenas’sahlin? Ara ma'nedan ashir.”

Elven words her mother sang to her once. Now, that did make her falter.

One slip in resolve and he yanked her flush with his chest, his breath now sweltering against her skin. Gold eyes glinted over her shoulder, and fear froze her in place. This was the Fade, hazy and green and nauseating. Here her hair wasn’t stiffened from muck and the air was thick with incense.

He drew her close, chuckling as if he could read her thoughts.

“You think me a trick.”

“Aren’t you?” she said with a breath’s pause. Isolation hadn’t robbed her of her voice here, at least.

“You know who I am, vhenas’sahlin.”

_Who._ Well, then.

“Don’t you fucking dare—” His hold tightened and simply anchored her flailing body in place. His hold was far too warm. This was unlike any demon she’d ever met.

“And I feel most unwelcome.” Whirling wisps, pearly white and melding with smoke, hummed at the outer reaches of his magic. They were familiar and thrumming, like lyrium but somehow different. “Perhaps I am a trick, perhaps I am not.”

Fuck the Fade and everything with it.

“We can help one another, you and I.”

The slaughtered dragon’s cries echoed in her ears, an ethereal song which left her disoriented.

“You seek secrets, of which I have many,” he said, gentle touches trailing to the hem of her shift. Skimming over her sides, his cool hands rested on the ring around her neck. “Tell me who kept silent.”

“The bear,” she whispered. He smiled into her hair. “But you are a trick, a mirror. Demon, raven —”

“And dreaded wolf. Yes, I could be,” he agreed, “but demons live life eternal, and ravens see all corners of the world."

“Or a dragon with wicked eyes and a wicked heart.”

“Back to this, are we?” he tutted, shifting his feet to banish any imaginary space between them. “Fragment though you are, you have allowed me into your body, but not into your heart. Now you must decide if the quickened child at our bedside should be the bearer of such knowledge.”

Not the first time she’d encountered a demon who enjoyed puns. And Aurelian Titus with such power, what an unsettling idea to even consider.

“And what of your price?”

“My price?” he mocked, snorting. “Do you think yourself so significant to not be cast aside ravished and bloodied and dead once the humans take a portion of my essence?”

She swallowed hard. No, she didn’t.

“Time dwindles. Who I am matters not, not if you value your life, small as it may be.” Nails sharp as talons snatched her hands, forcing a blade into her grip. “Halam sahlin. Will us as one, vhenas.”

Under one condition: no more endearments. A wicked smile showed her his answer. This was going to get old fast.

Blood flowed freely, making the hilt slippery, but she held fast. A sharp hiss at her shoulder scattered her hair, making the pain almost worth it. Gritting her teeth, she thrust the blade until it could go no further, its gleaming tip now jutting from his back.

Warmth pooled in her belly again and her back went cold. She yanked the blade out and stabbed the ground in front of her. Crimson pooled at her feet.

“You are a curious one,” ‘Dirthamen’ told her, voice tight.

“You deserved it.” She was tired of being a plaything.

He chuckled again, strangled and unlike before.

“The human is dead, but another will take his place.” Still they were joined, but she was alone in the haze. “Before she does, I will whisper you a secret. You recall the tale. Now walk through.”

Before them towered a mirror, glass glowing an eerie blue. On the left stood a great bear in stone, clawing air for an owl’s spread wings. Shivers tickled her spine, and she knew she had no choice in the matter. There was nothing quite like this in Minrathous.

“The wolf has little quarrel with the bear, yet I followed my brother,” he sighed, “and they want out. For their sake...and yours, do not let them walk free."

**Author's Note:**

> Halam sahlin: this ends now  
> Iras ma ghilas: where will you go  
> Vhenas: home; place where the heart is  
> Ara ma'nedan ashir: lost to me in sleep  
> Irassal ma ghilas: wherever you shall go


End file.
